Greenware bowl with waves and floral decoration, Yaozhou kilns, 12th century (1101 - 1200), Jin Dynasty (1115 - 1234), stoneware, thrown, with carved and combed decoration under a green glaze; unglazed base; glazed rim, 11.4 cm (height) - 22.3 cm (diameter) - at foot 7 cm (diameter). Lent by the Sir Alan Barlow Collection Trust., LI1301.76, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford © The University of Sussex

A fragmentary bowl of related type, but probably slightly earlier in date, discovered at the Yaozhou kiln site, is published in Songdai Yaozhou yaozhi [Yaozhou kiln sites of the Song dynasty], Beijing, 1998, pl.XXXI, fig.1. A similar bowl from the Rockefeller Collection is inscribed with a date equivalent to 1162.

The large bowl has conical sides with a broad groove below the rim, and a tapering foot with a recessed base. The inside is decorated with a wide band of lotus, carved with a broad tool and depicting two slender flowers and two leaves among combed lines to render curving waves, the centre and a broad band at the rim are undecorated. Outside is a broad cash-diaper border and a highly stylized flower scroll with two blooms flanked by leaves, all quickly carved. The matt, yellowish-olive glaze covers both inside and outside, but leaves a broad ring inside as well as the foot and base free, for firing in a stack. The exposed body has a light grey colour.